Are We There Yet? Fascism in America

[Octafish]

A handy wake up call from Counterpunch:

Are We There Yet?

Fascism in America

By STEW ALBERT
Counterpunch
August 23, 2005

Is America going fascist? Or has the cursed event already happened? It depends on your definition of fascism. What usually occurs in a fascist scenario?

* Labor unions are weak and the right to strike is denied by law. In Bush's America, the unions and their solidarity are extremely weak. The right to strike is still permitted by law, but strikes seldom happen and when they do, as in the current case of Northwest Airlines, scabs are brought in and management and the White House collude about how best to crush the workers. A merging of giant corporations and the State is well along.

* Civil liberties are declining in number and the right to assert them grows increasingly chancy. When the Patriot Act is combined with a variety of authoritarian laws passed during the Clinton administration and fanatics are placed in charge of the secret police, those who do speak out against the government must carefully watch their words. Much of what was once permitted to rebels is now against the law. Indeed, with secret trials, undisclosed prisons and torture, one may question to what extent the law actually still exists.

* The increasingly Draconian regime faces a weak, dispirited and divided opposition. America is almost a de facto one party state where the Democrats pay Bush the highest compliment by trying to imitate him. And many in the radical left and progressive movements (Cindy excepted) aren't able to go beyond silly sectarianism or tactical and organizational incompetence. --- The rise and glorification of irrational philosophy. The current government assault on scientific thought in the name of Christian extremism and phobic nationalism easily fills that requirement. Additionally, a cultural war rages where authoritarian religious values deride and delegitimize their opponents as practitioners of decadence and treason.

* Fascism tends to be warlike and criminally aggressive. The invasion of Iraq combined with the flag waving, ultraviolence and official big lies does the trick. And the ongoing threats to Syria and Iran strengthens the case.

CONTINUED...

http://counterpunch.org/albert08232005.html

BTW: You don't have to be a NAZI to be a Fascist, but it helps.

[Neocondriac]

1. yet???????????

The day the khaki kids showed up in Broward County and shouted down a recount effort back in 2000 it had begun!

[Octafish]

3. Good point. Most of them worked for the GOP and RNC.

Bartcop identified a bunch of them as staffers for the likes of Trent Lott, Tom DeLay and their low ilk.

Bush's Conspiracy to Riot

By Robert Parry
August 5, 2002

More than three decades apart, two political riots influenced the outcome of U.S. presidential elections. In 1968, protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago hurt Democrat Hubert Humphrey and helped Republican Richard Nixon eke out a victory. On Nov. 22, 2000, the so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot” of Republican activists helped stop a vote recount in Miami -- and showed how far George W. Bush’s supporters were ready to go to put their man in the White House.

But the government reaction to the two events was dramatically different. The clashes between police and Vietnam War protesters in 1968 led the Nixon administration to charge seven anti-war radicals with “conspiring to cross state lines with the intent to incite a riot.” The defendants, who became known as the Chicago Seven, were later acquitted of conspiracy charges, in part, because the protests were loosely organized and because solid documentary evidence was lacking.

After the Miami “Brooks Brothers Riot” – named after the protesters’ preppie clothing – no government action was taken beyond the police rescuing several Democrats who were surrounded and roughed up by the rioters. While no legal charges were filed against the Republicans, newly released documents show that at least a half dozen of the publicly identified rioters were paid by Bush’s recount committee.

The payments to the Republican activists are documented in hundreds of pages of Bush committee records – released grudgingly to the Internal Revenue Service last month, 19 months after the 36-day recount battle ended. Overall, the records provide a road map of how the Bush recount team brought its operatives across state lines to stop then-Vice President Al Gore’s recount efforts.

The records show that the Bush committee spent a total of $13.8 million to frustrate the recount of Florida’s votes and secure the state's crucial electoral votes for Bush. By contrast, the Gore recount operation spent $3.2 million, about one quarter of the Bush total. Bush spent more just on lawyers – $4.4 million – than Gore did on his entire effort.

CONTINUED...

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/080502a.html

BTW: A most hearty welcome to DU, Neocondriac. Really like the handle!

[nashville_brook]

2. this thread is interesting RE this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4449466

[Octafish]

4. Odd how so few got investigated for threatening Clinton and his family.

Sorry to read about the dispersions cast upon a DUer for stating an idea, nashville_brook. That's not what America is supposed to be about. Remember the guy who went to jail for the burning bush joke?

'Burning Bush' comment draws prison term

Man plans to appeal

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (AP) -- A man who made a remark about a "burning Bush" during the president's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison.

Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon was convicted in September of threatening to kill or harm the president and said he plans to appeal. He has said the comment was a prophecy protected under his right to free speech.

Humphreys said he got into a barroom discussion in nearby Watertown with a truck driver. A bartender who overheard the conversation realized the president was to visit Sioux Falls the next day and told police Humphreys talked about a "burning Bush" and the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it.

"I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush," Humphreys testified during his trial. "I had said that before and I thought it was funny."

CONTINUED...

SOURCE: CNN Dec. 10, 2002. The archive no longer has original story.

What a country.